Continent 1 is the largest landmass in the Outer Hemisphere and probably the biggest on Pegasia. In the high-orbital photo below, it's the continent at the top. Continent 4 and Continent 5 are below and to the right; on the far left, the coast of Continent 2 is just visible, and to the lower left, Continent 3. None of the straits between these five landmasses are difficult for either flying species or primitive mariners; the five form what we may think of as the Pegasia's Old World, the better-connected hemisphere. Jared Diamond argues that it isn't fertility that makes a land progress but position--crossroads collect ideas and innovations, even if they're swept by plagues or wars. Continent 1 is the Outer Hemisphere's crossroads. Expect advanced cultures. Or invent them!

Continent 1 looks like a flying dragon with tundra wings, a desert heart, jungle claws... and a severed head. It's remarkably like Asia--northern taiga and tundra, central steppes just north of a Himalayan spine, a temperate western peninsula like Europe, a southwestern desert highland like Iran, a southern subcontinent like India, a Borneo off the southeast, a Far East of green piny islands and peninsulas like Japan and Korea off a sort of Yellow Sea... As I list all the parallels I'm surprised myself.

Yet it's not Asia. It's visibly smaller, apparently Africa-sized. In truth it's smaller still, for Pegasia's diameter is 90% of Earth's, and its area only 80%. In fact, Continent 1 is only 18 million square kilometers (7.5 M sq mi), not much bigger than South America! True, the great islands off the south, east and west add several million square km, but Continent 1 is still modest by Terran standards.

A second very visible difference is it's maritime. Only Asia's fringes are broken up, but Continent 1 is positively spidery--arms of the sea reach deep into all but the very heart. This has twin consequences:

CULTURE: While the big picture looks Eurasian--three great cultural heartlands, east, west, and south--all three regions are broken up like Europe, and there's no barrier like Suez to navigation along the coasts between them all, facilitating sea trade. Even caravans across its much more fertile heartland have a far easier time than on Asia's Silk Road. Thus, from prehistoric times, Continent 1's cultures will have had more trade and contact than Eurasia's--even assuming the dominant species isn't winged. And given Pegasia's low gravity and dense air, that's a foolish assumption. Fliers would spread ideas (if not bulk goods) even more quickly. I'd predict a quickly-advancing, fairly unified society, or cluster of societies linked by trade.

CLIMATE: milder and rainier. Steppes and deserts are much smaller, shores are greener. Despite its much smaller area, Continent 1 has just as much fertile land as Eurasia! The inland deserts and steppes are much smaller. This has further cultural implications: while barbarian migrations in time of drought might happen here, as in Eurasia, they probably won't shape the whole continent's history. Such people will be less numerous, with fewer resources; coastal civilizations will be proportionally stronger, and because trade around the coasts is easier--no Suez barrier--they'll be better coordinated in coping with barbarian problems.
I'm not necessarily projecting Savage Barbarian Warriors here; but as I write, the superficially different but fundamentally outward-looking civilizations of coastal Europe, India, China and America all suffer from Barbaric Hinterland Problems. Economic refugees, narrow thinking, religious nuts wielding the Savage Barbarian Vote... Still, in other species, tolerance may not be just a trade-city thing; even if it is, Pegasia encourages flight, so cultural exchange may not center in seaports. Inland fliers may not be backward or isolated at all. Will airborne Pegasian cultures seem decentralized?

I'm not assuming the dwellers of these port cities are all the same species. Personally, I doubt it. Since flight is so easy, Pegasians are likely to migrate around the world and settle in habitats that suit them, rather than struggle to "conquer" (i.e., degrade) or fit into marginal or inappropriate lands. So several species with different preferences may share the continent. Its ecodiversity makes this even more likely.

This next photo, a low orbital shot, shows northwestern Continent 1: a rather European peninsula and islands.

In the extreme northwest is a sort of Britain--with the emphasis on "sort of". It's much further offshore than ours, a mini-plate truly splintered off from the continent. It's also more broken and scattered--remember, Pegasia's current sea level is rather high. The main island is cool-temperate like England, but satellite islands range from subtropical to Nordic. The archipelago looks colder than it is; offshore is a trench, and in response to the oceanic plate's subduction, both volcanic and fault-block ranges hulk above the coasts. These are ice-mantled, giving the cluster the look of an overgrown Iceland or Spitsbergen. But the coasts and lowlands are quite mild, and densely forested in places.

Even the northernmost island, mostly rolling downs of windy pasture, is settled, if sparsely; below is a sketch that might almost be western Ireland. That's a hamlet of a dozen families nesting in a sea-cliff like swallows. I don't know what they look like yet--that's up to you--nor do I know yet whether they raise animals on that pasture for meat or some equivalent of milk, or grow low wind-tolerant crops (the potato is intergalactic).

All that's certain is that they're fliers taking advantage of the sea-winds slamming into these cliffs. A perpetual updraft! No trudging to the fields, at least. But there's a psychological boost as well: these won't be isolated peasants! Not where every cliff and mountain ridge is a freeway. News will travel the length of this archipelago, this Britain, in a single day.

But these isles are culturally and geologically apart from the rest of Continent 1. Let's tour the continent proper...

The western tip of the continental platform is an island as big as Ireland, followed by one the size of France, then a peninsula the size of Iberia. But all greener. Professor Higgins was wrong: the "rain in Spain" does NOT "fall mainly on the plain!"--coastal mountains block most storms from reaching Spain's central plateau. Here on Pegasia, though, Higgins is right: all of Pseudo-Iberia is exposed to sea winds; the broad coastal plains and inland mountains are mantled in rich subtropical broadleaf forests. Not a bit like Spain! Well, except for the hexagonal Alhambras dotting the rivers--they're almost Spanish with their red tile roofs.

Are they villages, monasteries, markets, universities? I won't say you tell me again! No species-designers have expressed much interest in this neck of the woods, and if that continues, maybe I'll build a species myself; someone who'd find six sides to everything, not four. Six-limbed, probably, though the poor wingless 'taurs in the sketch seem less likely on Pegasia, now that I think of it, than an angelic or pegasian (lowercase!) model. Or a big, big bee. By all means come up with someone who'd like to live here, swapping ideas or honey or husbands under that roof! Laaaast chaaaance...

So western Continent 1 lacks a landlocked plateau like Spain's. But there's a second reason the region has a greener south shore--it doesn't border a landlocked Mediterranean with deserts beyond; instead there's a broad strait more like Earth's ancient Tethys Sea. Storms have a longer "fetch", some rolling in from thousands of km to the east. Louisiana, not Italy...

Well, I exaggerate. This keep or village or whatever it is on the southern shore of Pseudo-France could almost be on the Riviera or in northern Italy.

This open channel affects the fertility of our pseudo-Mediterranean just as much as of the land: strong currents will flush the strait and churn up nutrients. Expect much denser life than our stagnant, briny Mediterranean! Whoever lives on these shores will fish. Fliers with water-repellent feathers, diving in the waves like pelicans? You tell me.

From pseudo-France, let's flap east over the channel to the mainland. Green country, but not Germanic; coastal Oregon perhaps! Rainy, tall forests, rare snow; almost subtropical, even at 50 north. Inland rise rocky hills, cupping fingerlakes; even more like northern Italy.

Let's veer left and begin our loop around Continent 1. Over the long Pegasian afternoon, the forests ahead grow a bit more somber and piny than the southern greenwoods, but still mixed and luxuriant; they rarely endure hard freezes, let alone much snow.

The next day northeast, riding the winds along the irregular spine of the Western Peninsula, a second cape reaches north, a larger one. More European, with consistent winter snows--for all of three weeks! Remember Pegasia huddles closer to its little sun; the year is brief, so it's harder to freeze or starve unless winter's truly a big chunk of the year... It isn't global temperature alone that makes Pegasia's high latitudes milder than Earth's! For both animal and plant life, the metabolic bottleneck isn't precisely how hard it freezes, but how long food production halts...

The great, mountainous island northwest of this--pseudo-Copenhagen?--is Nordic but again with a short mild winter on the coasts; inland, though, the volcanic uplands really could host a winter Olympics; the highest peaks bear glaciers. Pegasian summers are shorter too.

East of this lies a Baltic Sea--but far warmer than ours, for it lies at an almost Mediterranean latitude. The south shore is especially fertile: a long warm subtropical stip. Yalta, perhaps, or the Persian shore of the Caspian Sea. Swimmable most of the year.

Let's veer to the right into the mountains for a long day's detour. The winds off the sea will help us over the first high ridge. Inland, it's much drier. The mountains do wring some further rain out of the thin dry air--and each ridge is higher, falling to desert basins, steppes, alpine meadows, but always rising again, relentlessly. Not quite Tibet or the Tien Shan, but rugged, with sparse trees and stony little streams gouging out surprisingly deep canyons.

Big on scenery, but short on fertility. No surprise there--it's true on many Earth continents too. But unlike Asia's hinterland, these steppes, mountains and plateaus aren't endless; the interior is at most a tenth of Continent 1! It's true that this "Central Asia" is dangerously close to "Western Europe's" rich lands, much as Beijing was always vulnerable to barbarian hordes; but even if Pegasians had the concept of war, here the hinterland's too small to raise more than a barbarian gaggle. Not to mention that these folk probably make an excellent living in trade and tourism; the central mountains form another of those great Pegasian flyways, an aerial Silk Road. Who needs banditry?

I don't know who these people are, just that they seem to walk a bit like bats, using folded wings as one pair of legs. Nor am I sure why fliers would be walking at all, unless this is so high up that flight is difficult for them. More likely that round structure, suspiciously like a wooden version of the Roman Pantheon, is sacred, and flying over the skyhole would be blasphemous. Or at least rude. And Pegasians, needing to get along with many species of different temperaments and outlooks, tend to be polite. Service with a smile works on tourists--why not on gods?

Oh well. I only wanted to remind you that although circumnavigating a continent generally reveals its most fertile lands (life loves borderzones!) Pegasian continental interiors needn't be as culturally isolated as they often are on Earth. Wings alter all! Continental spines aren't barriers but cosmopolitan flyways. These folks may be sophisticated indeed. Whoever they are...

Let's head north, back over the mountains toward the northern sea. It's the lands off those flyways that are lonely and backward; lands like...

This vast region is not Siberia. Pegasia's Arctic is milder than ours: it isn't landlocked, so it's not cut off from southerly currents; and no large landmasses are polar enough to ice over like Greenland, so this Arctic Sea thaws by midsummer, and northern winters are relatively short and mild.

Still, this is another world after the mild "Baltic Sea" region. As we flap north over the endless wooded hills at the base of the Northwest Peninsula, ice gleams ahead. I don't yet know the name of this range, but I do know the peaks reach 3-5 km high (2-3 mi) and the passes 1-2 km (3300-6600'). Conifers or the local equivalent--cold-tolerant trees, dark to absorb heat and loaded with resins for antifreeze--pass like a belt of shadow beneath us, then thin as we rise to a pass. To either side, alpine meadows below red rugged castles, stairs and walls, crowned and veined with ice. From the crenellations, the range appears to be sedimentary, like the Rockies--unlike most of the coastal mountains we've seen, which are mostly volcanic or tilted fault-blocks of granite. But we're now far from the plate-edge; as far as you can be on busy little Pegasia, with all its rifts and trenches. We're only a day's glide from the sea, but geologically we're continental!

After the stark mountains, the lowlands ahead are a surprising: a great trilobed gulf with very different lands around each lobe. This is Continent 1's real Scandinavia!

The northeast bay is cool, with thin forests and open meadows, for it's past 60 north and has rugged mountains inland; still, the coastal valleys are far milder than our Siberia at that latitude. They look like it though, since Pegasia, with no recent Ice Ages, has less life specialized for long snowy winters than we do. Pseudo-Norway!

The central lobe, which we're gliding toward, is by far the richest: a coastal plain 2-300 km wide reaching down as far as 43 north, with rich boreal forests where broadleaf trees again join the mix. Pseudo... southern Sweden's farm country? But milder still. The Rhine? Yes, Centralobians will have great vineyards. Even Earth birds get bombed on fermented berries and swoop on cats, laughing themselves silly. These people will grow grapoids, and get sloshed, and fly into trees now and then. Ow. You know they will. But what else will they do and be? You tell me.

Mind you, don't take the sketch too seriously. Trellises, yes, but those centauroids could well be tourists like you. Who knows who lives in those thatched, spired domes across the water? Only you do. So tell us!

A day of hard flying over rugged hills and we descend to the eastern lobe of the great sound. Narrower plains than the central (centaural?) bay. And higher mountains, and further north--I'm afraid all that means we're back in Scandinavia again...

And much worse to come, if we let ridges or stiff winds steer us too far to the left. North Cape truly is Siberian--if not in absolute temperatures or length of winter, biologically. It's the largest chunk of truly polar ecology on Pegasia. Mountainous, mostly above 60 north, this peninsula did glaciate in that last Ice Age, and still shows the scars. Soil is thin here--the ice scraped it far south, or down into the lowlands now drowned under North Gulf. The coasts are taiga (boreal forest), bogs, and windy steppes we could almost call tundra--not quite permafrost, but most-of-the-year-frost. Inland the hills rise to stony barrens and peaks as high as the "Rocky Mountains" far behind us, but ice-mantled to their knees. These icefields fuse in the far north to perhaps the biggest continuous icecap on the planet, though it's merely Icelandic; its climatic effects are local, unlike Greenland or Antarctica.

Let's avoid the whole region, and fly as close to due east as we can--though we'll be forced a bit north to avoid high mountains. Long Pegasian days over river, forest, hill and bog. It gets old... but at last we descend to a merely Nordic plain, with tall trees: the shore of Northeast Gulf. Off to the left, over a strait, is a dim blue shore: North Island, a final chunk of Siberia. Let's not go and say we did. Instead, we'll follow this southern shore a day or two east, then south. The trees grow taller, the days warmer. Winters here are harsh, but summers mild, even muggy. The mountains recede from the shore; another wide, rich coastal plain leading down into...

That central plain, thinning slowly from forest through open woods to prairie, and only fraying to true desert thousands of km inland. How unlike China, where the desert and its barbarians were dangerously close to the capital; this land is more like the American prairie, imperceptibly drier with each km inland, but all habitable--indeed, inland Continent 1 has milder winters than North America or Central Asia, since there's no Tibet or Greenland generating harsh blizzards. Summers get hot, it's true. But the mountains are always near; snowfed creeks water the semiarid prairies below.

Even if Pegasians couldn't fly at all, their version of the Silk Road is a lot shorter and safer. There are no sand- or dust-storms, no bandits, no bad waterholes (no need for waterholes at all), no blizzards unless you linger in the mountains in winter--and they'll do that for fun. Pegasians may or may not be built for skiing, but I'll bet they slide down snowy slopes somehow--creatures as diverse as humans, caribou, otters and ravens all do.

The vast, mostly evergreen forests. These are nothing like the thin, cold woods of Siberia--those do exist here, around the islands and gulfs in the far north (on horizon in the orbital photo). But south of the mountains is a vast temperate forest, more like primeval Europe or eastern North America than East Asia today. And warmer. The northeast coast and the big island can get snow at sea level in winter, but more like Tokyo than Siberia; and that huge central gulf is no Baltic; it's more like an oversized East China Sea, nearly as warm as our Mediterranean--more reliable rains, too.

In Asia a huge swath of the pleasantest latitudes, the subtropics and warm-temperate belts, are taken up by high mountains and deserts trapped behind them. Fertile regions are limited and coastal. Not here! That sheltered, many-armed sea breaks up Eastern Continent 1 into almost European fractality--the eastern cape, the huge island and its satellites, the broad peninsula west of it, the green heartland drying to prairie to the west--though each is nameless now, each can sustain huge, diverse populations. Who, what? You tell me. The inland green patch alone, around the head of the great sound, has more good farmland than all East Asia.

In the far south, instead of a rainy, jungly Southeast Asia, we have a smaller, drier, almost Mediterranean peninsula. We can't consider it a dwarfed India, since just to its west there's a larger peninsula that really is quite Indian. This southeast cape looks, most of all, like a wetter, more fertile Greece. The high mountains to the northeast block most spring and winter storms, but in summer a short but rainy monsoon sweeps up from the south to green the hills.

A flotilla of islands great and small, plus the relative starkness of the land, suggest that whatever culture develops here (you tell me) will rely on the sea--both fishing and trade. Expect its sailors to fan out early, along the coasts of Continent 1. And further out, I think; the lush 165 Archipelago sprawling thousands of km to the east has several island-names that are cognates of Mwelari, the largest island (caught in the sun's glare in the orbital photo above) just off this Grecian peninsula.

I suspect that just as prehistoric Taiwanese fishers may have spread over the Pacific to become the Polynesians, the Mwelarians spread (more likely by wing than by sail, but you tell me) so far from Continent 1 that their descendants, from chilly Tolea to sweltering Labira (and beyond) remember their homeland only as a myth.

All right, those were the differences. But this region does resemble East Asia, too: it's hard to avoid, purely for geographical reasons.

A humid climate, with hot muggy summers and cold winters. Inevitable for an east coast at this latitude on a world with generous seas--winds come off that sea year-round, and bring moisture with them.

Diverse maritime cultures nurtured by these rugged coasts, proud of their independence and localisms, contrasting with...

the China-like monolithic giant that will almost certainly develop on those broad mainland plains.

Islands and peninsulas as green but also as rugged as Japan. Here's a sketch near the tip of the Great Eastern Cape, on its oceanic shore. Cold nor'easters batter this coast in winter, freezing and thawing, chewing soft rocks away. But the shore fights back: the oceanic plate shoves the continental plate-rim up and inward and upward, relentlessly. A cliff reared by inches! That level top's a marine terrace. A mere thousand centuries ago, it was this beach.

But what sorts of 'maritime peoples' in tension with what sort of 'inland giant'? You know who has to tell me... But maybe it's too late. We may have a winner for eastern Continent 1! Meet the Nevros... and learn why the East was for centuries shunned as the Haunted Coast.

The larger peninsula on the long south shore is quite different. It's bigger than India, and reaches closer to the equator. Southeast Asia blocks our India from getting Pacific storms; but this Pseudo-India, open to the east and reaching deep into the tropics, gets monsoon rains in the north and heavy year-round rain in the south. Luxuriant forest everywhere!

Inland, there's no equivalent to our dry Deccan Plateau; instead, hills rise gradually to a tall, snowy range near the west coast, trapping more rain. The southwestern shore is as lush as Kerala, but the rainy strip extends further up the coast.

The whole great peninsula will support a great civilization--of some kind. But what? You tell me. All I'm sure of is that it won't be the Nevros, the strange natives of the Far East; their unique body structure (or lack of it: a Nevros is essentially a horde of coordinated gnats) leaves them vulnerable to a wasting disease endemic to these jungles: too many gnat-catching frogs. Travel is supposed to broaden the mind, not eat it! The Nevros call this the Amnesia Shore.

Here at the southern tip of Continent 1, fliers must make a choice--to complete their circumnavigation of its coastal lands, or to peel off and head southeast into the tropics, to huge Busre Island (which, before it suddenly became the ancient homeland of the arboreal, winged, antlike Busrehi last year, I was calling Pseudo-Sumatra for obvious reasons) and the Twin Continents beyond.

However, let's assume below that you decide to complete the circuit of Continent 1 and then hop to Continent 2 over the western straits... though I'm kind of tempted myself to peel off. You see, if we head back north the next few weeks get rough.

Why? Our Pseudo-India does have one drought-prone strip: its northwest coast grows increasingly dry as we fly north. Here, the trade winds come from inland most of the year--from huge mountains, wrung relatively dry of rain. The hills grow scruffy. Olive and rust, then gold, then brown...

Past 20 degrees north, true desert appears. This dry rugged lobe of Continent 1 has the size and general look of Iran-plus-Afghanistan. But without Pakistan; there is no equivalent of an Indus Valley. Instead, tall, snowy but scattered mountains send down small snowmelt streams, creating many narrow, irrigable strips and shallow canyons in the dusty red plains below their forested shoulders.

These mountains are broken up, not a single great coastal wall like Iran's Zagros Mountains. Thus, even weak monsoon storms can blow well inland, dropping rain and even snow onto any mountains high enough to block their passage.

So the inland deserts here are much smaller than Central Asia's, with milder winters; while the highest peaks are Andean to Himalayan, Pegasia's low gravity and dense atmosphere create higher air pressure and milder climate at high altitudes.

It might not be such a bad life here, if you're winged and can cross the desert from one of these green sky-islands to the next in an hour instead of dusty days. A migrant cycle: summers in the mountains, winters down in those warm canyons.

Don't take my sketch too seriously, but I do see broad-winged creatures designed to catch those desert thermals... but what do they look like, what do they eat, how do they see the world? Sing along with me, now: you tell me.

Offshore is a second Mediterranean archipelago, dominated by an island the size of Greece. Rocky, semiarid, with mostly scrubland in the north but more groves and tree-lined streams in the south, away from the desert, where the sea winds bring modest seasonal rains. A giant Crete? An island Yemen?

This unpromising land has an attraction humans would miss. For fliers out of the Twin Continents and southern Continent 1, it's the shortest (and greenest) flyway, to Continent 2 and Continent 3. So although the sparse biomass can't support a huge population and water will always limit the size of communities, I suspect it'll develop civilization rather early--just based on air travel, not shipping.

Further northwest, the coast grows merely semi-arid. A thousand dreary kilometers and you'll reach the fringes of the pseudo-Europe we started in. While not a lush coast, it's not a really forbidding journey for fliers or sailors; even caravans would find short creeks from the scrubby hills, at least during the wet season. Still, I bet most bulk goods travel by boat, though only when the monsoon winds favor it. A yearly cycle like the Arabian Gulf.

Still, let's do it. On the wing it's only a sweaty, thirsty couple of days. In the hot afternoons, we can swim in that mild and crystalline sea. Slowly the hills grow greener, the streams more reliable, the trees more extensive...

All right; you dutifully completed the circuit,
You did your homework,
You ate your dietary fiber...

Can we get to the fun stuff again? Like the crazy rift valleys of... Continent 2.